Broadband Download Rates – MB, GB, Kbps Huh?

It’s always tough to calculate between line speed and download speed without busting out the calculator, yah you can estimate roughly but it’s not really accurate.

Generally you can say the download speed will be 100 times (in KB/s) the line speed (in MB) so a 1MB line like Streamyx should give you approximately a 100KB/s download speed. So below are some actual figures on how much you can download per hour with your line-speed or using the estimate of download speed (KB/s).

Here are the figures along with the equivalent Malaysian broadband packages (including Unifi) – I’m not sure of the other offerings (TDC, Maxis etc) – so you can figure those out yourself.

Of course these are all maximum theoretical line speed, it’s very unlikely you’ll actually achieve these download rates – but you should get pretty close. Just for reference the max speeds that are possible on Unifi & Streamyx are:

512kbps Streamyx – 62.5KB/s

1MB Streamyx – 125KB/s

2MB Streamyx – 250KB/s

4MB Streamyx – 500KB/s

VIP 5 (5MB) – 625KB/s

VIP10 (10MB) – 1250KB/s

VIP 20 (20MB) – 2500KB/s

Obviously the above may not be realistic, for example on Unifi VIP5 you’d more likely be seeing 500KB/s downloads. You can judge based on the speed you are actually getting and calculate using these figures:

At 40KB/s you will download 0.14GB per hour

At 50KB/s you will download 0.18GB per hour

At 100KB/s you will download 0.36GB per hour

At 150KB/s you will download 0.54GB per hour

At 200KB/syou will download 0.72GB per hour

At 500KB/s you will download 1.80GB per hour

At 800KB/s you will download 2.88GB per hour

At 1000KB/s you will download 3.59GB per hour

At least now you’ll know what kind of performance your line is giving you, how much you can abuse it and how fast your quota will run out. Imagine on Unifi VIP5 I can download 2.25GB per hour and the proposed quota is 60GB – that means I can finish the quota in just under 27 hours..that’s just over a day.

Hey man, was good meeting you at Darren’s place yesterday. Now I know why you had all that Unifi info at the tip of your fingertips! I’m still waiting for the service to be activated in my area. Till then, enjoy downloading those movies while the rest of us are capped at 3 mb! Oh and do checkout my automotive blog at http://whatadrive.blogspot.com ! Cheers! 🙂